Neighborhood community: Why it’s important for kids

Some of our best childhood memories come from running around a neighborhood with a pack of kids, getting our hands dirty and scraping our knees. Are today’s kids getting those same experiences? Does neighborhood community still exist?

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Who are the people in your neighborhood? Kids need to know

We recently moved from the upper unit of a duplex into a house. I feel lucky for many reasons. We no longer live above someone, so the kids don’t have to tiptoe about the house. We have two additional closets (though not more bedrooms). We have our very own garage and garden, and there’s a park within walking distance.

But the best thing about our new house is the family with three kids who live two doors down from us.

My 7-year-old instantly hit it off with their oldest daughter and the two girls are now running in bare feet up and down the sidewalk between each others’ houses. They’re trading clothes, building forts with blankets, setting up elaborate tea parties for their dolls, and spending a lot of time outside in the backyard.

The play is free, spontaneous, and unscheduled. We don’t put dates on the calendar or even pick up the phone. My kids simply knock on the neighbors’ door, or their kids come charging up our front steps.

Right here in the big city of San Francisco, we’re building community.

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Today’s neighborhoods are quiet. Where are the kids?

The older my kids get the more I recognize the importance of neighborhood community. I’ve realized that our family could live in the biggest house on the prettiest street yet our life wouldn’t be complete unless we knew our neighbors.

When we share conversation, bits of gossip, plums from our trees, and cups of sugar with our neighbors, life seems a little cozier and more comfortable. We feel less lonely, more at ease, and safer.

In fact, studies have shown that people who live in close-knit communities are statistically safer. They’re less likely to be burglarized. They’re more likely to get help if they tumble down a set of stairs, fall out of a tree, have a heart attack.

Safety is a huge plus, but what I’m really enjoying are the impromptu get-togethers. The other day some neighbors dropped by and four of us ended up sharing a bottle of wine. We had some other neighbors over for a last-minute barbecue. And then there are the play dates with the kids down the street.

In this hyperscheduled world in which we’re raising kids–where ballet class is at 3 p.m. and then it’s off to karate–there’s something so refreshing about an unscheduled play date. Parents these days control every detail in their children’s lives and it’s liberating for a child to take the reins and make their own choice to knock on the neighbor’s door, of course with a parent’s permission. Could there be a better way for a child to learn independence?

In the 1970s, when the Sesame Street characters were singing “Who Are the People in Your Neighborhood?” the majority of Americans could answer the question posed in this song. I certainly could.

My parents knew who lived in every house lining my childhood street, and I can tell you the names of all the kids who I ran around with in a pack: Erika, Sander, Amy, Kenny, Donny, Tommy, Christina, Tyrene, and Ryan.

I grew up with these kids, exploring and discovering the world. We climbed trees, caught frogs, picked cattails, and made mud pies. We rode our bikes up and down the street, organized games of kick the can, and built tree houses and rope swings.

My neighborhood friends taught me that you get up when you skin your knee and that learning to ride a bike without hands takes practice. They taught me that you help your friend when she falls in the frog pond and you set up a lemonade stand when you want a new bicycle.

These were life lessons that came about in an unsupervised, unmanaged environment–and that I wouldn’t have ever learned as easily through a lecture by mom.

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When kids get together, they get their hands dirty. And that’s a good thing.

But are kids learning these lessons today? Do they know the answer to the question, “Who are the people in your neighborhood?”

My parents still live on the same South Bay street, and they no longer know who lives in every house. Now they probably know only half the neighbors by name, maybe even less.

A recent study by Pew Internet found that 19 percent of people know the names of all the people who live close to them, while 24 percent know most. The remaining three-fifths of Americans know either some (29 percent) or none (28 percent) of their neighbors by name.

These numbers certainly aren’t shocking when you consider the way people socialize in today’s world. We make connections, share news, and trade gossip through emails, Facebook, Twitter. Why would we know our neighbors when we’re all locked up inside on our computers?

A 2005 Kaiser Family Foundation study found that kids between 8 and 18 years old spend an average of nearly six hours a day with electronic media, such as TV, video games or computers. What tween is going to build a tree fort with Jake who lives down the street when he can play video games inside?

What’s more, today’s young children are so overscheduled that they don’t even have time for unscheduled neighborhood play. My own kids have little time with their new friends down the street because they’re in after-school care or at piano lessons or swimming class. They’re typically getting together with the neighbor kids for 20 minutes between dinner and bedtime.

But every little bit counts because a world where our neighbors remain nameless is empty, incomplete, and unsafe for our children. The old saying “it takes a village to raise a child” carries great wisdom, says Madeleine Lansky, who is on the clinical faculty in the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at UCSF. Children thrive when they know that they and their peers are being “held” lovingly in the minds of a collective of adults who care for them.

“Modern Western Civilization underestimates the central importance of our social needs, and puts a great deal of pressure on nuclear families to be the ‘end-all, be-all’ of providing support to its members,” says Lansky, who also runs a program, Profound Sustainability, aimed at getting kids outdoors. “In reality, families seem to function better when they are ‘held’ within a larger community that can take turns providing an extra level of support when it is needed.”

It is this kind of nurturing that builds resilience and strengthens children to be able to venture out into the world with confidence,” Lansky adds. “Children take note of these early positive interactions and carry a sense of how they wish to live as adults.”

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A neighborhood is a place where you can ride your trike.

Mike Lanza knows how to build community. The father of three kids turned the front yard of his Menlo Park home into a playland for kids with swings, sandboxes, a 30-foot wipe board, a bubbling fountain, and a basketball hoop. Every night all the neighborhood kids come outside after dinner and gather in what Lanza likes to call his “front yard family room.”

Now this five-time Silicon Valley entrepreneur is helping and encouraging others around the U.S. to build community and safe outdoor spaces where neighborhood kids can play through his Web site and blog Playborhood.com.

Lanza admits that creating a kid-friendly neighborhood isn’t easy in the Bay Area, especially San Francisco. “In our world class city here,” Lanza points out, “less than 15 percent of its population is between zero and 18, as opposed to 25-plus percent in the rest of the U.S. Lots of people there are not happy to see your kids as you walk down most streets there. I know there are neighborhoods within SF that are better than others for kids, but they’re certainly not a panacea.”

Here on our street in San Francisco we’re slowly getting to know our neighbors. The other day a dad knocked on our door with his 18-month-year-old and invited us to a neighborhood watch meeting. A girl across the street just introduced herself and asked if she could babysit. We were also excited to learn from a neighbor that there’s a block party at the top of our street every fall.

But Lanza warns that block parties aren’t the solution. “Everyone seems to have a block party these days,” he says. “It’s better than nothing, but I think many people pat themselves on the back after attending their block party thinking they’ve done their neighborly duty. What matters most is what people do every day, not once a year.”

Do you know your neighbors? Do your kids play with neighborhood children? What have you done to build community in your neighborhood?

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